Brains, and the eating there of.

Zombies. If you are reading my blog you should be well aware of the fact that I love the hell out of some zombies. So given that obsession I thought I’d share a few thoughts on some of my recent zombie themed consumptions. Some good, some bad – and this is plenty full of spoilers so if you don’t want to know about them don’t keep reading. Of course if you do, then, um.. yeah.

First off I just finished all three hardbound editions of The Walking Dead graphic novels and they turned out to be as awesome as I’d heard they were. I’ve actually been wanting to pick these up for a while but it wasn’t until a gift certificate I got for xmas that I just threw down and grabbed them. These are quick reads as you might expect but the storyline doesn’t suffer from that at all. Like any good zombie story the interactions between the non-zombies is the real focus and theres some top notch storytelling going on here. The one complaint I’d heard was that the artwork made some of the characters hard to tell apart, but honestly I didn’t notice that as a problem. The individual characters are extremely well developed and you understand how and why they react in some situations the way they do and while some of the story lines have been seen before (friendly survivers vs not so friendly ones) the little twists make them still completely enjoyable.

Let me just say this right out of the gate, Fido fucking ruled. I had no idea what to expect walking into this movie and I haven’t been so plesently surprised in a long time. It’s a totally new twist on the genre set in the technicolor world of the 60’s seemingly following the storyline of Night of The Living Dead but taking place after the zombie war is over and done. It’s a comedy more than a horror movie and and the basic story line is that a company has come to the forefront and figured out a way to domesticate zombies so rather than just killing them, people can use them to do house work and other things that a slightly smarter family dog might be expected to do. Of course it’s never that simple and some of the relationships aren’t what they seem. This film is spot on with every detail and never takes itself too seriously. I could watch it again and again, and probably will. Definitely an awesome addition to the world of zombie movies. A+++ Will do business again!

For every little bit of awesome in Fido there is a bit of suck in the new Day of the Dead. Seriously, it sucked so bad it was nearly unwatchable. I found myself saying outloud “you have to be fucking kidding me” again and again. It’s one of the worst zombie films ever made. OK, it’s not quite as bad as the Return of the Living Dead series but it’s damn close. You might be thinking this is obvious because it’s a remake and there for destined to suck but then again you might be one of the people who refused to see the new Dawn of the Dead which means you missed out bigtime. I’m sorry but it’s true, if you didn’t see the new Dawn you can’t call yourself a zombie fan. Pack it up and go watch Batman Forever or something. But I’m ranting here. In the same vein as Dawn this is a remake in name alone. With the exception of a few minor story points this is an entirely new movie, and entirely sucky. Look, we can all admit that the original Day was not the best thing Romero ever did but that’s no excuse for the massive piece of crap this turned out to be. Everything about it made me want to claw my own eyes out, and I can only hope that the people making the movie did the same thing because if they were blind that would slightly begin to justify how shitty everything about the movie was. The effect, if you can even call them that, were YouTube quality and calling the young soldier boy “Bud” at the beginning actually physically hurt me. But, point is I watched this so you don’t have to. Unless you hate yourself and want to endure needless suffering, then go ahead. Otherwise run in fear.

Jumping back to the print world, I finally picked up the final chapter in David Wellington’s triology, Monster Planet. I loved the first two books (Monster Island & Monster Nation) and while I’m only halfway through this one it’s a perfect continuation of the story. While the first two books take place almost simultaniously, this one is set 12 years after the fact and picks up right where you’d hope it would. If you haven’t been following the story it’s totally worth picking up the first book and seeing how Wellington takes a new angle to this by telling part of it through the eyes of some of the zombies that managed to maintain some bit of consciousness. With the first two books I could barely put them down and only my current hectic schedule is preventing me from doing the same with this one. I’m kinda sad this is the final piece of the story, but super glad to have this series in my library.

OK, that’s all the zombieness you get at the moment. Now I have to get back to real work. Enjoy!

Fido was filmed in the small(ish) city that I grew up in, so even though I’m not a zombie movie fan I checked it out in the theatre. I guess I just didn’t get into the ’50s faux-Leave It To Beaver feel of the thing.

To me the best stuff in Fido had already been done in Shaun of the Dead, even if just in the last few minutes when they showed the news reports of post-Z Day.

Great post man. I’ve been meaning to get me some good zombie books/graphic novels. I started reading World War Z at Rudy’s recommendation but never finished it. Sad to hear about the remake of Day of the Dead. I knew it was being made but didn’t know it was out and didn’t know it was going straight to dvd. Bummer because I was expecting the Dawn remake caliber for this one as well.

Have you heard about Romero’s latest project? It just came out in select city’s on the 15th. Called Diary of the Dead. There is one theater playing it here so I’m going to check it out before it’s gone.

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Hi, I’m Sean Bonner

I recently moved to Tokyo after 17 years in Los Angeles. I’ve run hackerspaces and blog networks, an art gallery, design firm and a record label. I’m one of the co-founders of Safecast, and currently act as Global Director. I’m an Associate Professor at Keio University, a Shuttleworth Fellow, an MIT researcher and sit on the board of CicLAvia.